Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

[Wrecktangle]

Not everyone needs constantly pushed to the brink. We know what content is challenging, when I'm in the mood for challenge, I do that stuff. But i'm challenged at work all day. Sometimes I just want to come home and relax and make some progress. It's nice being to pull from all of the content, and not just HW stuff. It always bothered me that blizzard just let previous expansions die off when a new one came out. I like when a dungeon I havn't seen in two years pops up in a roulette. it breaks up the monotony that I felt in wow after a month of running the same hand full of dungeons.

Don't misunderstand pushed to the brink for engaged. I understand that the community abhorred the original Pharos Sirius because it was "hard", but it was only hard because you couldn't AFK fairy your way through it or hold down rage of halone to win. You had to ACTUALLY use a few abilities to succeed. This wasn't hard despite what people say, but it certainly was engaging. You had to react to things happening. The things weren't hard, but there were consequences for failing and you had to use more than 1-2 buttons an entire fight. This is what I want from the dungeons at a bare minimum.

Now I know the "hard day work, easy game" mentality is a valid thing. I won't judge based on that. But let me ask this, do you actually enjoy going into Tam Tara, and holding down your impulse drive cooldown all dungeon (more dps than FT->VT). Do the tomes you get at the end of the dungeon bring any semblance of enjoyment to you or is it just a mindless chore that you like because it's not like your IRL job?

Sure getting Sastasha breaks up your Neverreap monotony, but then it adds your 1 button DPS rotation. You trade a pretty corridor for a darker less pretty corridor. Not sure how that breaks anything up IMO.

I also agree with the ex roulette. HW should have been the expansion they scaled up with on content, both with the amount, type, and things like new mechanics. Instead we got less dungeons each patch, and i dont feel like they really did anything to push the boundaries. It's the biggest thing I give to wow over 14, blizzard comes up with some pretty good boss mechanics.

I sincerely wish they'd take some risks and push their comfort zone. I'm absolutely terrified SB is literally going to be HW in a new wrapper, which was just ARR with a new wrapper. I'm hoping I'm 100% wrong though. I'm rooting for SQEX!

I think what is tricky about randomized or different paths for encounters is exemplified in Coil Turn 2, with the ADS. People will choose the path of least resistance and there will be an optimal path that everyone takes, or like you said if there is a disparity in drops or difficulty between different encounters, it may be quicker or more desired to just leave.

I like the experimentation of design that is PoTD, but that is largely monotonous and the scenery is bland. The visuals of procedurally generated content don't do much in the way of story telling the locale like a fixed dungeon does, at least for now.

Don't think so one dimensionally. Dungeons can be created with events that change the way you approach a dungeon, or optimal path, shaking up your experience every time you enter. Just adding more corridors does absolutely nothing for dungeon gameplay, for several reasons, one of which you stated.

I agree that some care would need to be taken to ensure that people don't just leave/spam reset. Not sure what system would be useful to curtail that though.

Regarding procedurally generated stuff, that would be awesome when they can finally make robust interesting gameplay with it.

Not every pug group could do it and there are still groups that can't just brute force their way through. I've ignored the mechanics once in recent memory and we barely pulled through with that method. Had another where it was best to use the mechanics as designed. Just depends on the group you get.

My compromise I'd like to see is 2 dungeons in EXDR at launch. Patch 4.1 adds 2 dungeons to EXDR. Patch 4.2 drops the original down to level 60 roulette. That way there's always a rotation of 4 possibilities in EXDR.

That's because probably 40-60% of all pugs are either alt-tabbed most of the dungeon, or flat out AFK watching second monitor. I know this for an absolute fact because I've seen it, almost half the time I step in DF and measured it via ACT. I know that an ilvl 200 NIN can do more than 196dps over an entire dungeon, especially when I'm only 2 ilvl higher was averaging over 1k. That's not a bad player, that's someone deliberating choosing not to be engaged, and it's part SQEX's fault for designing content for players like this and not those who want to actually PLAY the game. IMO of course. I firmly believe battle content should always be engaging. Non-engaging stuff is what side content should be for. Again, IMO of course.

Your compromise isn't bad, but I think they should aim bigger. Try to find a way to keep all the current expansions dungeons relevant both from an engagement perspective and reward. I think part of the problem ties back to itemization honestly. The game just doesn't have anything fun or cool to give you as a reward. Everything is some arbitrary currency that just gets handed in for some kind of menu content.

Your definition of relevant is specific to your enjoyment of it, which is a fair and honest definition, however regardless of how easy it is or how enjoyable/ unenjoyable you find it, running the leveling roulette provides you level appropriate rewards that you can apply towards your character progression. So it is relevant to character progression.

Thank you for respecting my definition. Would you mind refreshing my memory what level appropriate rewards you're referring to? The only thing I remember is tomes. Which honestly IMO isn't good enough for a reward.

To use WoW as a metric again, since I know you get it, in FFXIV you've seen and helped players through lower level dungeons dozens, hundreds or maybe even thousands of times. in WoW...when was the last time you ended up setting foot in Wailing Caverns, Scarlet Monastery, Blackrock Depths, Shadow Labyrinth or any BC/ Pre-BC dungeon as a max level character and got level appropriate rewards?

Very fair point. Other than to specifically help a friend never. I'll very briefly mention Timewalking even though it isn't directly related. I hate timewalking with a passion for the EXACT same reason I hate the sync system in FF14. It's actually even worse than level sync. I once fell asleep during my time walking weekly. No joke. I literally fell asleep for like 12 minutes and woke up and was kicked. That's how boring it was. Since then I have never done the weekly despite it offering good rewards. As you know I take 'engagement' very seriously in gaming. Engagement (aka fun) is my #1 priority in gaming.

Not that running Sastasha, Copperbell Mines (NM), Tam Tara Deepcroft, etc... are fun...I'm just saying running them provides level appropriate rewards which means you can and/ or will run them at max level and get something relevant to your character progression. In WoW, running those lower level dungeons at max level does not provide character progression relevant rewards, though they do provide transmog fodder if you're in to that. But that's a separate discussion.

Both games provide the same tmog fodder, so that comparison is irrelevant, otherwise I completely agree.

I know that I criticize FF14 a lot on these forums and you guys like to defend it, and assume that I like WoW or think its better, and have 0 criticisms for it (but trust me I have TONS).

Yeah even back in my WoW days i preferred Shadowfang Keep or Scarlet Monastery over "random bullshit in a cave" and i feel the same here. I would rather be going on an adventure in a haunted mansion or something over what feels like a hole in the ground invested with bullshit.

Maybe thats kind of why i prefer games like dark souls to sandbox survival games. Gotta have dat environmental storytelling porn.

Blame Resident Evil and FF6.

I mean caves can be interesting, it's true that memorable locales are generally more interesting. For instance Cave of Shudom in Kings Field 2 (THROWBACK BOYS) was just a generic cave, but that place was a hidden secret, offered Earth Magic as a reward, and was very difficult and engaging to navigate. All in all even though it was just a cave, it was VERY rewarding to explore.

[Resiak]

Don't misunderstand pushed to the brink for engaged. I understand that the community abhorred the original Pharos Sirius because it was "hard", but it was only hard because you couldn't AFK fairy your way through it or hold down rage of halone to win. You had to ACTUALLY use a few abilities to succeed. This wasn't hard despite what people say, but it certainly was engaging. You had to react to things happening. The things weren't hard, but there were consequences for failing and you had to use more than 1-2 buttons an entire fight. This is what I want from the dungeons at a bare minimum.

Now I know the "hard day work, easy game" mentality is a valid thing. I won't judge based on that. But let me ask this, do you actually enjoy going into Tam Tara, and holding down your impulse drive cooldown all dungeon (more dps than FT->VT). Do the tomes you get at the end of the dungeon bring any semblance of enjoyment to you or is it just a mindless chore that you like because it's not like your IRL job?

Sure getting Sastasha breaks up your Neverreap monotony, but then it adds your 1 button DPS rotation. You trade a pretty corridor for a darker less pretty corridor. Not sure how that breaks anything up IMO.



I sincerely wish they'd take some risks and push their comfort zone. I'm absolutely terrified SB is literally going to be HW in a new wrapper, which was just ARR with a new wrapper. I'm hoping I'm 100% wrong though. I'm rooting for SQEX!

Most of the player base for FF 14 isn't long time mmo players. It's catered more towards the final fantasy fan. And it's also available on console. If you make the content more difficult for the max level players running roulettes, you push out the newer players that are trying to learn the game. You are correct, it does suck getting the dungeons especially the dungeons under 30. But the entire point of the roulette is to get higher level players helping the new ones. I have no issues running these, getting my reward, and helping new players out.

And yes, it does break up the monotany. I rarely run ex roulette, because seeing the same two dungeons bores me. Nothing to do with the difficulty, the environment wares me down. Seeing the same zone each day wares me down. People are stimulated by different things, and for me, the visuals killing the same mobs, doing the same mechanic dance every day is more disengaging then anything. It's why I quit legion after four months. I got bored of seeing the same dungeons, emerald nightmare, and then nighthold repeatedly. I need variety.

[Katchii]

Thank you for respecting my definition. Would you mind refreshing my memory what level appropriate rewards you're referring to? The only thing I remember is tomes. Which honestly IMO isn't good enough for a reward.

Very fair point. Other than to specifically help a friend never. I'll very briefly mention Timewalking even though it isn't directly related. I hate timewalking with a passion for the EXACT same reason I hate the sync system in FF14. It's actually even worse than level sync. I once fell asleep during my time walking weekly. No joke. I literally fell asleep for like 12 minutes and woke up and was kicked. That's how boring it was. Since then I have never done the weekly despite it offering good rewards. As you know I take 'engagement' very seriously in gaming. Engagement (aka fun) is my #1 priority in gaming.



Both games provide the same tmog fodder, so that comparison is irrelevant, otherwise I completely agree.

I know that I criticize FF14 a lot on these forums and you guys like to defend it, and assume that I like WoW or think its better, and have 0 criticisms for it (but trust me I have TONS).

The rewards I'm referring to are different depending on if you're running the dungeon as a max level character or not. For max level characters the reward is the tomes, which can be used to purchase max level gear, items for your anima weapon grind (which you need a TON of), or tokens for weapons. Tome acquisition can occur in many areas, so running the leveling roulette is just one of many options to acquire them. Whether you feel the reward is enough is a personal feeling, but the fact remains that IF you decided to do the roulette you would get tomes which are a relevant and level appropriate rewards that a max level character can use.

If you're not yet max level then you get an xp reward that is appropriate for your level when running the leveling roulette, that can be anywhere from ~15% to 50+% of a level, and the base enemy kill xp coupled with that bonus can be worth up to an entire level or more depending on what level you are and what dungeon you run. Again, whether you fell this reward is worth running the dungeon is another discussion, my point is IF you decided to run it you would get a reward towards character progression that is appropriate for your level.

[Deleted]

So, I just watched the benchmark trailer...gameplay..thing.. I gotta share my hype

Looking at the new flashy skills they add... Monk one certainly seems baller, Summoner seems MEH at best, Warrior gets a charge? I mean yay, but comeon xd

Samurai still charges with the sword down like the DRK, made me sad. Samurai limitbreak made me lose it though, the sheathing of the sword at the end is glorious. Red Mage feels like a fencer with an offhand orb, makes no sense to me!

Im guessing there will be a lot of Samurais!


I can't decide what to do though, its either Warrior tanking which I've done before with Summoner or Samurai alt. Summoner gets a bit crappy from the perspective of doing mechanics and stuff at the same time as playing it seems tricky! I always seem to fall behind when there is so much to do, with the whole moving, placing, dotting the planet.

Edit;
Won't lie. I want me some carbuncle action...

[dope_danny]

Red Mage feels like a fencer with an offhand orb, makes no sense to me!

Red Mage has always been the fencing dandy flavour of mage in FFXIV, with BLU being more varied but in recent games like XI have a more arabian nights style vibe to them with a scimitar weapon and a lot of blue silk based outfits.
RDM in FFXIV has a magic crystal and rapier, in close its a sword and a buffing off hand, dash out and they combine to become a caster staff designed by the survivors of the mhachi/amdapoori war to fuse their schools of white and black magic into red magic. Which in previous games is either low level BLM/WHM spells, buffs like en fire or en water used in XIV by the beast tribes right now or combining spells for different effects e.g: thunder+fire=gravity, water+wind=haste, stone+ice=stop and so on.

They are meant to be the 'jack of all trades, master of none' job in final fantasy but in recent versions its basically a weaker blm that fights in close combat and has the best party wide buffs. If it can fill a magical version of BRD though we gotta wait and see.

[Deleted]

Yeah, Samurai though is pretty hot. I know I've said it before but the LB finisher and the sheathing at the end is absolute perfection. I just hope some actual combat skills end up having it too. It looks too damn good. The fight stance is good, the running with drawn weapon is not, one of the things I hated about the DRK is the running with the Sword, but the combat stance is proper and good. I expected DRK to have a similar, not the weird bending they've got going...

I just have to see what more they unveil, I suppose having FF14 as an alt or something could be fun, get all the fancy gear and join some guild as a social where you hope they arent totally shit, cos you cant hold conversations with most. If you say raiding on boss X is simple due to tis mechanics not being complex, and then have them rage at you for not having done it, you should shut-up, it makes me....cringe. Not doing something doesnt make it harder xd

Alas, I sidetrack a bit... Got to see what happens. I enjoy a lot of the classes, so should be fine.

[Katchii]

Yeah, Samurai though is pretty hot. I know I've said it before but the LB finisher and the sheathing at the end is absolute perfection. I just hope some actual combat skills end up having it too. It looks too damn good. The fight stance is good, the running with drawn weapon is not, one of the things I hated about the DRK is the running with the Sword, but the combat stance is proper and good. I expected DRK to have a similar, not the weird bending they've got going...

I just have to see what more they unveil, I suppose having FF14 as an alt or something could be fun, get all the fancy gear and join some guild as a social where you hope they arent totally shit, cos you cant hold conversations with most. If you say raiding on boss X is simple due to tis mechanics not being complex, and then have them rage at you for not having done it, you should shut-up, it makes me....cringe. Not doing something doesnt make it harder xd

Alas, I sidetrack a bit... Got to see what happens. I enjoy a lot of the classes, so should be fine.

If you have never done it, your opinion for how hard you think it is, is irrelevant in comparison to those who have done it. That's the same with practically everything in life.

[Kakera]

If you have never done it, your opinion for how hard you think it is, is irrelevant in comparison to those who have done it. That's the same with practically everything in life.

Really not going to bother with this conversation but just wanted to point out that this is false. You can analyze a skill and determine what factors go into said skill logically and mathematically without having experienced it. All it takes is good analytical skills and the ability to take in information. Experience isn't needed when it comes to making judgement about anything in life. All it takes is the information and data needed to present fact.

[Deleted]

Could be, I ended up joining a team after they were progressing(the people claiming I cant comment), and beating it faster than the people claiming its hard, when I claimed its not and cleared it way before them. I assume that means I was right and you're wrong? Yeah, that's pretty much what it means.
PEople claimed tankswaps on A1S were complicated, I said a tank swap is never, has ever been or will ever be hard to do. They in turn continued to tell me to stfu how its something I can't comment on, when I've never done it.

Yeah, I can claim a lot of shit is easy, because it is. There's hard things, but few and far inbetween. Tank swap in any game, under any circumstance, unless RNG is involved, is not hard.

[Deleted]

Maybe this is just me, but I thought Samurai's would be a bit flashier.

I'm somewhat disappointed in what was shown about that new Dragoon skill, it's not like it looks like crap, but it certainly is less spectacular than what we already have.

*blaaargh - wobbles a dragon out of his arse*

[Deleted]

I...agree... Its sorta cool but when you put it that way, its sorta funny and true

[TheCount]

People are not thrilled about the ninja fire frog? I thought it was a strong combination of cool and funny
Warriors getting charge was pretty expected at some point, I did like the animation
BLM, are they getting demi or gravity? Could it be an execute type spell?

[Katchii]

Really not going to bother with this conversation but just wanted to point out that this is false. You can analyze a skill and determine what factors go into said skill logically and mathematically without having experienced it. All it takes is good analytical skills and the ability to take in information. Experience isn't needed when it comes to making judgement about anything in life. All it takes is the information and data needed to present fact.

I agree with your point, but I would bet 9/10 times or more.... when presented with information from two different sources, one of which has no actual experience with the subject matter and is simply speaking from basically a theoretical point of view and the other has first hand experience, knowledge and therefore more than just theories, you're far more likely to take the information from the source with experience more seriously that the one without the experience. This is assuming both sources are otherwise credible. Jobs work this way, giving someone directions used to work this way (before the advent of GPS and apps like Google Maps and Waze), etc...

I'm not trying to say you personally were wrong @Tangman just saying that the perception from others is not going to be a good one.

[TriHard]

People are not thrilled about the ninja fire frog? I thought it was a strong combination of cool and funny
Warriors getting charge was pretty expected at some point, I did like the animation
BLM, are they getting demi or gravity? Could it be an execute type spell?

Naruto called, he wants Gamabunta back.

[Deleted]

Summoner ability... AoE or ST? hard to tell from benchmark

[Kakera]

I agree with your point, but I would bet 9/10 times or more.... when presented with information from two different sources, one of which has no actual experience with the subject matter and is simply speaking from basically a theoretical point of view and the other has first hand experience, knowledge and therefore more than just theories, you're far more likely to take the information from the source with experience more seriously that the one without the experience. This is assuming both sources are otherwise credible. Jobs work this way, giving someone directions used to work this way (before the advent of GPS and apps like Google Maps and Waze), etc...

I'm not trying to say you personally were wrong @Tangman just saying that the perception from others is not going to be a good one.

I agree that's what most people would do and when thinking about it logically of course that's what most people would do. But, that's only because most people have natural bias. Nobody wants to sit down and actually figure out who is correct they will simply listen to whoever clearly has more experience than the other and say he is right because "lol he has experience and you dont". Luckily public perception doesn't take away from actual factual reality.

[Katchii]

I agree that's what most people would do and when thinking about it logically of course that's what most people would do. But, that's only because most people have natural bias. Nobody wants to sit down and actually figure out who is correct they will simply listen to whoever clearly has more experience than the other and say he is right because "lol he has experience and you dont". Luckily public perception doesn't take away from actual factual reality.

It's not about reality and about who's right or wrong, necessarily. Experience counts, because it gives the person with it a perspective on things that people without it won't understand or even think about. Logically thinking about a problem can only get you so far, at some point you have to actually apply that theory and do something with it and that's where experienced people have an advantage, they have an understanding of how to apply a theory to the given situation to get to the outcome they want. Someone without experience CAN get there, true, but it's likely to take longer, require more than one attempt and could possibly lead to more things to fix.

Not sure what field you work in, but I would personally take someone with 10 years of experience and a Bachelors degree over someone with a Masters or even Ph.D and zero years of experience any day of the week....position permitting of course.

That said...MMO mechanics aren't exactly revolutionary from game to game so experience with one can easily be applied to others so my original argument is kind of moot at this point.

[everydaygamer]

Have they said if any abilities are getting removed? I already have 3 full action bars with my Ninja and I would hate to need a 4th.

[Veluren]

Have they said if any abilities are getting removed? I already have 3 full action bars with my Ninja and I would hate to need a 4th.

Spells that are just boring stims are likely on the chopping block or getting rolled into one cooldown (so blood for blood, inner release, ect.), I'm not sure what that would crop out from Ninja, a lot of it are things that are useful like smoke screen so Nin's in an odd place there

Also, to sorta call out the discussion earlier in the post, Samurai could well be flashier than we're showing, the context has been different, but we've only seen two of their spells and their LB (the charged sorta blade beams and the one that makes a crescent), I imagine they're holding back the really crazy looking spells for the wow factor

[dope_danny]

Have they said if any abilities are getting removed? I already have 3 full action bars with my Ninja and I would hate to need a 4th.

same number but some existing stuff is being combined or changed to passives and replaced with new 60-70 moves. For example its probably armour crush gets rolled into the debuff finisher to your combo and the toad summon replaces it as a dream within a dream style off GDC burst spell.